![]() I hadn’t read a Korean book, I hadn’t met a Korean person, I didn’t eat Korean food because I didn’t grow up in London, and this was six years ago. Well Korean was slightly random in the sense that I had no connection with Korean. In the sense that you picked up a language only as late as your 20s, and you did so with a focussed view to be a translator. But with your career, and with The Vegetarian, what you’ve done seems quite extraordinary. The first thing that seems to be common about translations, at least in the mainstream view in India, is that you pick up a text that’s written in what’s called your ‘second language’ and translate it into your first language, your ‘mother tongue’. ![]() This book, which was later titled The Vegetarian, went on to win Man Booker Prize International Prize in 2016.įor the unacquainted, this seems like a magical beginning, but over a conversation with Mint at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Smith strips down the dream run, speaks about what its like translating three books each by two very different Korean authors, and more. Smith started working on it, she says, with extensive help from a dictionary app on her phone. ![]() A couple years on, she got her first book assignment: a 2007 book by an author called Han Kang. Like most Britishers, she was monolingual till she picked up Korean in 2010 with a view to become a translator. Jaipur: Deborah Smith was 22 when she first started learning a new language. ![]()
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